Mississippi still burning with ignorance
Last July, President Bush signed a bill renewing for 25 years the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. One week before the nation was to celebrate Independence Day, the State of Mississippi made a mockery of the law. While the majority of the country was observing the holiday, Ike Brown was questioning whom the laws of Mississippi were designed to protect.
On June 29, U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee of Mississippi ruled that Noxubee County Democratic Party leader Ike Brown and the County Democratic Executive Committee “manipulated the political process in ways specifically intended and designed to impair and impede participation of white voters and to dilute their votes.”
At first I thought the judge was named Robert E. Lee, but “Tom S.” is correct. Lee found Brown and the other defendants legally responsible for violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act by discriminating against white voters and white candidates. The Court ruled that Ike Brown violated federal voting laws by discriminating on the basis of race by issuing directions to count the absentee ballots of white voters differently than the absentee ballots of black voters, a fact Brown vehemently denies.
This was the first time the federal government has used the 1965 Voting Rights Act to allege racial discrimination against whites. But has the court lost its memory?
As a result of intimidation, violence, and racial discrimination in state voting laws, a mere 3 percent of voting-age black men and women in the South were registered to vote in 1940. In Mississippi, less than 1 percent was registered.
We have been the victims of disfranchising laws that included poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of “good character” and disqualification for “crimes of moral turpitude.” These laws were designed to exclude black citizens by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures selectively. Other laws and practices, such as the “white primary,” attempted to evade the 15th Amendment by allowing ‘private’ political parties to conduct elections and establish qualifications for their white members. In 1964 white supremacists fiercely resisted voting by African Americans, and in Mississippi less than 7 percent of voting-age blacks were registered.
Ike Brown is from Macon in Noxubee County, a district where African Americans were not allowed to buy a house on Main Street until a few years ago and where the first black was not elected to public office until 1980. Ike Brown was instrumental in electing Reecy L. Dickson as the first black elected official in Noxubee County since Reconstruction.
Noxubee County is only 45 miles from Neshoba Country, the location of one of Mississippi’s most notorious civil rights murder cases. On June 21, 1964, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were murdered during Freedom Summer, after traveling to Neshoba County to investigate the burning of a black church. This should give you a pretty good idea of the area where Ike was accused.
The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Johnson on August 6, 1965, suspended literacy and other tests in counties and states showing evidence of voter discrimination, most notably in Mississippi. These counties and states also were prohibited from creating new voter requirements that denied citizens their right to vote. Moreover, in the areas covered by the act, federal examiners replaced local clerks in registering voters.
Last October when the suit against him was filed, Brown said, “I merely tried to keep white Republicans from voting in Democratic primaries. The lawsuit is political, an attempt to discredit me because the Democratic Party in eastern Mississippi has been doing so well at bringing new voters to the polls, which may mean someday soon that Mississippi, a red state, could turn blue.”
So, with this ruling, Ike Brown will have to regroup and find another attempt for justice for black people in Noxubee County and throughout the State of Mississippi. Ike did not celebrate the 4th of July in the traditional way. Instead he read the 4th of July speech by Frederick Douglass, particularly the part that read:
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.”
I am convinced that judge Robert E. Lee – I mean, U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee – does not remember Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, that was organized to challenge the state’s “regular” Democratic party, which for decades had denied blacks the opportunity to participate in the electoral process. He must not know that in the Southern states in 1964, fewer than 40 percent of black adults were registered to vote. In his Magnolia State, which stood dead last, the figure dropped to 6.4 percent. He does not remember that thousands of others expressed a desire to register, but were prevented from meeting that goal by threats, violence, or the refusal of voting registrars to register them. In Mississippi, white resistance to black registration was especially bitter and dangerous.
I could go on, but what is the use. I will just end by saying, “I still like Ike”.
I can be reached by fax at (314) 837-3369 or by e-mail at: berhay@swbell.net.